THE PRICE OF A PULSE.

A man who thinks he owns the world looks incredibly pathetic when he cannot even lift his own head from a hospital pillow without vomiting blood.

The digital heart monitor beside Dante’s bed beeped with a slow, monotonous rhythm that irritated my ears. The morning sun was just starting to pierce through the reinforced glass windows of my recovery wing, casting sharp, clinical lines of light across his pale, sweating face. I stood at the foot of the bed, the heels of my designer shoes clicking rhythmically against the pristine white tile as I scrolled through his neurological charts on my tablet. I had already traded my blood-stained surgical gown for a crisp, tailored white suit that zipped tight at the collar, a visual shield against the ghost of the girl he used to know.

A low, guttural groan echoed from the mattress. Dante’s eyelids fluttered open, his dark irises swimming in a sea of broken red capillaries as the heavy sedatives began to lose their grip on his brain. He turned his head slowly, the plastic oxygen mask over his nose fogging with his heavy, uneven breathing.

The moment his gaze focused on me, his entire body stiffened. The heart monitor gave a frantic, sudden leap in speed. Beep-beep-beep.

"Lyra..." he rasped, his voice sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping against a concrete sidewalk. He lunged his right arm forward, forgetting the clear IV lines taped to the back of his hand, tearing the plastic tubing clean out of the vein. Dark crimson blood instantly spurted onto the white cotton sheets. "You're... you're real. You didn't die in the wreckage. Oh god, Lyra..."

I didn't blink. I didn't step forward to apply pressure to his bleeding hand. I simply tapped the screen of my tablet, my fingers moving with absolute, chilling indifference.

"My name is Doctor Vesper, Mr. Maroni," I said, my voice a flat, dead line that contained less warmth than the air conditioning unit humming above us. "And you will refer to me as such. I do not know who this 'Lyra' person is, but if she had an ounce of survival instinct, she stayed in whatever grave you dug for her."

Dante flinched as if I had driven a real blade into his ribs. The ruthless king of the underworld, the man who had ordered executions with a casual wave of his hand, looked utterly lost. He pressed his bloody palm against his chest, right over the dark purple puncture mark where my needle had pierced his heart hours prior.

"Don't do this to me," he whispered, a sudden, desperate moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes. "I know that voice. I know those eyes. I spent five years staring at your portrait in the dark. I built a mausoleum for you in the family courtyard. I thought... I thought my choices killed you."

"Your choices did kill her," a smooth, dangerous baritone broke through the room's tense atmosphere.

Silas walked through the heavy wooden door, his hands casually tucked into the front pockets of his charcoal trousers. He had discarded his suit jacket, revealing the thick leather straps of his shoulder holster resting against his broad chest. He didn't look like a visitor; he walked in like a landlord checking on a tenant who was late on rent. He strolled directly over to my side, his shoulder brushing against mine before he slowly, deliberately wrapped a heavy, possessive hand around my waist. His thumb pressed firmly into the fabric of my white suit, anchoring me to his side right in Dante’s line of sight.

Dante’s gaze dropped to Silas’s hand, and the sorrow in his face instantly vanished, replaced by a blinding, murderous fury that turned his pale skin bright red.

"Silas," Dante growled, his teeth bared like a wild animal's as he tried to push himself up against the pillows. The heart monitor began to let out a continuous warning chime as his pulse crossed one hundred and forty. "Get your filthy, traitorous hands off her. What the hell is a Vance doing touching my woman?"

"Your woman?" Silas chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that carried the weight of a three-generation blood feud. He didn't pull his hand away; instead, he tightened his grip, pulling me closer until my hip was pressed against his leg. "You lost the right to use that word the second you traded her life to buy peace with the commission, Maroni. You threw her out like garbage to protect your northern territory. I was the one who pulled her out of the ashes. I was the one who funded her labs, built her clinics, and gave her a crown. She doesn't belong to a man who discards his own people. She belongs to the future. She belongs with me."

"I'll tear your throat out with my bare teeth!" Dante roared.

Driven by a sudden explosion of adrenaline and territorial rage, Dante swung his heavy legs over the side of the bed. He ripped the monitoring patches off his chest, completely ignoring the alarms that were now screaming through the room's speakers. He stood up, his massive, muscular frame towering over the bed as he prepared to lung across the space and kill Silas.

But the neurotoxin had left his nervous system completely shot.

The moment his bare feet hit the cold tile floor, his knees buckled like wet cardboard. He didn't just stumble; he fell hard, his massive shoulders crashing heavily into the ground with a sickening thud. He landed face-down directly at my feet, his fingers twitching against the polished leather of my high heels as he tried to drag his heavy, paralyzed body upward.

He was entirely on his knees, groveling in the dirt at the feet of the woman he had destroyed, gasping for air while his bitterest enemy stood over him like a victorious king.

Silas looked down at him, his expression one of absolute, unbothered disgust. "Look at the great mafia king. Can't even stand on his own two feet without collapsing into the mud. You're weak, Dante. Your empire is rotting, and you are completely irrelevant to her now."

I looked down at the back of Dante’s neck, watching his muscles strain as he tried to lift his head to look at me. I pulled a folded piece of heavy paper from my inner suit pocket and dropped it carelessly onto the floor, right in front of his bleeding nose. It was an invoice with a financial figure so large it looked like a telephone number.

"That is the price of your pulse, Mr. Maroni," I said, my voice dropping an octave as I looked down at him without a single drop of mercy. "You will transfer every single cent of that medical f*e to my offshore account by midnight tomorrow. Furthermore, your syndicate will grant my medical transport vehicles full, unrestricted clearance through your southern ports. No inspections. No delays. If a single one of my trucks is stopped, I will ensure your next dose of maintenance medicine contains a lethal counter-agent."

Dante stared at the paper in the dirt, his fingers trembling as they brushed the tip of my shoe, finally realizing that the gentle, crying girl who used to hold him in the dark was gone forever.